It is difficult to choose an excerpt. Visitors must read the entire piece! But this portion will start off the debate:
In a lame attempt to counter the refreshing grass roots spontaneity of the Tea Party, the leftist AstroTurf machine of head puppeteer George Soros has spewed forth a toxic brew of anarchists, communists, fascists, criminals, and aging hippies. In the former shadow of the World Trade Center, they gather to compete in anti-Semitic poster art and self-serving demands for handouts. These ignorant slobs don't even realize that their odd mixture of leftist philosophy and Sharia-inspired racism is old hat. Nobody did it better than Goering last century or than the Islamists do today.
Does history really repeat itself? Do prophets really exist? Or, are some people just gifted with an ability to see through the forest to identify the important trees? No modern philosopher has been more ridiculed and despised by mainstream intellectuals than Ayn Rand. Indeed, they barely concede that she was a philosopher. They have no problem with Kant, Marx, and Nietzsche. That evil triumvirate has been poisoning young minds for centuries.
Miss Rand gave some inspiring lectures at Ford Hall in Boston in the 1960s. Luckily, they were recorded and can be heard online. My two favorites are The Fascist New Frontier (1961), and Apollo and Dionysius (1969).
In FNF, she compares the platform of Kennedy's new frontier to the Nazi party platform in Germany from the 1920s. In less than an hour she manages to dissect both documents and shows them to be nearly identical. Jonah Goldberg's well-researched book, Liberal Fascism", which makes much the same point, shows that it is a constantly recurring theme in modern politics.
Her lecture Apollo and Dionysius" could have been comparing the Tea Party gatherings to the occupying mobs but for the fact that it preceded those gatherings by half a century. Instead, she compares the enormous well-behaved crowds and orderly traffic jams in or near Cape Kennedy for the Apollo moon landing of Neil Armstrong, to the dirty and undisciplined mob at Woodstock later that summer.
People came to Cape Kennedy to witness an event unique in human history, a symbol of all that humankind can achieve with reason and cooperation. Those who came to Woodstock wanted sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. Her incisive analysis of the two crowds exposes the stark difference between men and women as creatures of reason or as blobs of emotion detached from reality. Her words remain powerful and relevant to this day.
Are you not convinced? Imagine polling Tea Partiers and OWSers as to which of those events from the 1960s they would have attended. Not much question, is there?
At tea party rallies there was courtesy and respect. No racism. No anti-Semitism. Reverence for the Constitution. Locals invited strangers to dinner, or even to stay overnight. Not everyone agreed on everything. The result was serious and friendly dialog. There were no drummers at 3AM. There was nobody at 3AM. The site was cleaner at 3AM than it was before the rally.
But in New York, NY, urine flows in Zucotti Park at all hours. Drugs are plentiful. Nearby property is vandalized or stolen. Instead of the righteous indignation of free people, there is the insatiable whining of freeloaders and parasites.
In thousands of tea party events, there was a sense of kinship with all Americans. Rich and poor, black and white, anyone who showed up was welcomed. The unity that comes from common values and ethics is much stronger than that of hogs at a trough.
Read more: American Thinker: Apollo and Dionysius Meet Again
The comments at the site are very good and informative, too!
My parents, who were part of The Greatest Generation, were staunch Democrats. I can still recall all of the Democratic picnics that were held in our small town. I don't think that I even knew a Republican (or what their beliefs were) until many years later. After all, I grew up in New Jersey in the 1960's and 1970's! But the liberalism of that era didn't stand for what it does now. The progressivism that permeates the Democratic elites in Washington D.C. and the "liberal" states here in America are not anything like the political atmosphere in which I grew up in. So what changed?
I haven't taken the time to listen to the Ayn Rand recordings yet, but I will do so soon. However, many of the hints about what went wrong with the Democratic party since the Kennedy era have been researched and read by me over the years. Call me naive, but I didn't think that John F. Kennedy would have had ANYTHING to do with today's radical Democratic progressive leftists. But apparently, his administration was a part of it. How sad this is to realize! I had always surmised that Kennedy would have been more comfortable in today's Republican TEA Party Patriots base. But unfortunately, I would be wrong to assume such a thing.
As a member of the "baby boomer" generation, it pains me to realize how complicit my generation has been in the attempted overthrow of America by radical progressives. But it's STILL not too late to turn things around! The Election of 2012 is coming!!!
The following commentator over at American Thinker,unfortunately, sums it up quite well:
blackelkspeaks Today 07:27 AM
In my younger years, I was a strong Ayn Rand fan and was familiar with "Apollo and Dionysius" when it was first published. The truly disheartening thing has been to see the influence of the leftists among us, representative of the Dionysian view, grow and fester to the point that they constitute the majority view in all of our societal institutions. Rand had these people pegged over fifty years ago, yet we have allowed these monsters to achieve total control over every aspect of our lives. We, as a people, have sleepwalked our way into tyranny by routinely ignoring the warnings of those, such as Rand, who tried to reveal the base evil of collectivist ideology. We now see the sad results of our folly every day.
These comments are right on target, too:
•groman Today 06:10 AM
Roofster, he has spoken out; in favor of the OWS mobs. They're part of his reelection campaign sponsored by his old buddy Soros. Create crisis, provide a false solution, claim credit. Alinsky 101. The only problem is I think they may have made their move too early. Winter is coming and the herd will thin out. Of course they may all get bussed to Miami and other southern states to regroup for next summer. All we can do is continue to investigate the connections and publicize them to as many people as possible so that we by pass the PR department of the Democrats a.k.a. "the mainstream media."
• scythe Today 05:58 AM
"The unity that comes from common values and ethics is much stronger than that of hogs at a trough."
Truer words are seldom spoken. The sense upon arrival was comparable to that of coming home. To be greeted by family, friends, and a sense of safety and peace. When you have lived on guard amongst wolves and predators and arrived at a shelter with those who were kindred spirits, an extension of oneself, and vindication and a validation of what one holds dear and sacred, the feeling was almost indescribable. What anyone looked like, black, white, recently arrived, Asian, nothing mattered but the idea that we were all bound together, minds, hearts, spirits, and an overwhelming concern and love for this country and what our government was doing to destroy us and our future. The only thing to fear was that the OTHER SIDE would show up. We know who the jackals are. Those who are "occupying" are to be pitied. To have been blessed beyond measure simply be being BORN in America is something they will never appreciate for many reasons. They are being treated, like all human beings are treated in a left wing gulag, as disposable entities, discarded when useless, a ravening mob, whipped up to serve their masters whom they do not even have the intellect to suspect even exist. They are screaming about the wealthy at the same time their cords are attached to the soft hands of George Soros, one of the wealthiest men in the WORLD. Truly breathtaking.
• Navyvet Today 05:56 AM
And yet President Barack Hussein Obama seems to favor the OWS demonstrators giving us an insight into the radical chaos of his mind. So many Americans have slipped over to the dark side but are unaware of their own stupidity and ignorance. Emotional politics always, always leads to the hard men waiting in the shadows ready to impose their statist solutions. But the problem isn't just Washington and Wall Street it's the education fostered by the '60s radicals. Most didn't die from drug overdoses and alcoholism: they penetrated the educational establishment and spread their poison.
Read more: Hat tip: /American Thinker: Apollo and Dionysius Meet Again
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